Golden Sky
by no-rhyme-no-reason-in-love
Summary: Aizen's revival, Ichigo's fate, Orihime's light.


I'm still struggling! I can't write! I'M SO SORRY! It's useless, but I'm still trying. Still rewriting and rewriting the chapter for Hello Halcyon Days. Anyways, I had this dream last night about this one-shot, so I decided to write it up. And if you can't already tell, I do love the sun metaphor/symbolism that Kubo did, and yes, I use it a lot in all my stories so…sorry. Enjoy!

* * *

He opens his eyes. A golden sky is what he sees. Bright and glimmering, he is forced to close his eyes again.

His head turns slightly. It's not just the sky that is encased with this golden glow. It's everything. Everything is surrounded by it. He feels consumed by it.

His eyes shifts up, and his gaze is met by brown. She blinks in response, and he nearly smiles at the wariness that she regards him with.

Smile, he wants to say to her. Toy with her as he has done before, and he reaches out to her with his hand. Just to touch her face, but his hand bounces off her shield, leaving him with a lingering pain as if she burned him.

She flinches as if he had made contact anyways, and the urge to grin is back. She is scared. The girl whose power trespasses into the territory of God is terrified of him, and he derives pleasure in manifesting fear in her. In being able to eclipse the sun so easily, so effortlessly, so efficiently.

A brief movement has him looking behind her. Even with one eye locked, he can clearly see Kurosaki Ichigo noticeably restraining himself. It seems that the Ryoka boy does not like when his sun is threatened.

He tries again to feel her. Just for the reaction.

He is not disappointed.

She steps farther away from him, and Kurosaki Ichigo steps closer. All notions of alliance, of comradeship, of unity has vanquished as he whispers her name.

The Ryoka boy's reiatsu pours out of him, and with the girl standing in front of the enraged boy, he can almost see the sun because Kurosaki Ichigo's dark, red/yellowish reiatsu mimics the flares that radiates off the sun.

She is the sun, and the Substitute Shinigami is her solar flares. How absolutely co-dependent.

"Orihime," he says again, and her eyes dull while the boy behind grows brighter in rage, and he finds all of this amusing. So entertaing when she scurries off, and the boy's eyes trail after her. So satisfying in taking this as a small victory, his last victory over the boy who has defeated not only him but the one who could alter the future.

He watches as the boy's weakness engages in conversation with her other friends, and he takes in her battered appearance and her unnerved behavior. He is almost inclined to warn the boy that he should be careful with her because although everyone is saddened when the sun darkens, the boy is at risk for total damnation if he allows for her to cast too many shadows. Because ultimately, the sun will destroy itself, and he's seen the darkness in the girl. He's played on it, played with it, and he knows that she can willingly extinguish her own light.

But he doesn't. Because she is one of the few that has escaped his hands. One of the few who dared to deny his carefully crafted fate. She had saved the Ryoka too many times that he hypothesized that without her existence, without the birth of her power, he would have been the ruler of all.

Instead, he is at the mercy of her. He knows that Yhwach had killed him, and yet, here he is. Alive and breathing because of her, and he detests her for her ability. Because it mocks him. Because it rejects his injuries while restoring his failings.

The two are too alike. Both she and the Ryoka have rendered him inadequate.

The girl looks back, and Kurosaki Ichigo glances down, avoiding her eyes.

Maybe he is wrong. Maybe he does have one last victory to claim. After all, it appears that the Ryoka boy does not have the courage to either embrace nor release his own fate.

He closes his eyes, but even behind his closed eyelid, he can still see the golden glow. He can still feel her heat.

She will be hard to forgive, too.


End file.
